Now that I’d actually introduced him, Mike stood up with, I noticed, very un-sweated-on cue cards in his hands. While I was sure his speech would be excellent, I wasn’t quite able to stay conscious for it. Instead, I plopped my head onto the table, narrowly missing the remains of my souffle. And then felt Oliver rubbing reassuringly between my shoulder blades.

“I fucked that up,” I whispered. “I really wanted Bridge to know how much she means to me, and I fucked it up so hard.”

Oliver levered my face gently out of the crockery. “Lucien, you’ve spent the past three months helping Bridget with everything. You organised her non-gender-specific bird party with the slightly offensive T-shirts. You helped track down her fiancé when he went missing. You found her a venue and, for that matter, a dress. And while your speech was”—he gave a tactful little pause—“unstudied, it was clearly heartfelt.”

“Yes but—”

Putting a hand to my jaw, he turned my head towards Bridget, who was gazing across the table, misty-eyed and doing heart-hands at me.

“I love you,” I mouthed.

“I love you too,” she mouthed back.

And I absolutely did not cry.

After that, things were back to being blurry—not that they’d ever stopped. Once we were done with the speeches and the coffee, the dancing began, and at some point Bridge vanished and came back in the dress she was supposed to have been wearing all day. It was simple to the point of minimalism, which felt totally unlike Bridge until you realised it was exactly like her: just a clean sweep of white satin with a scoop neck and a full skirt. And she did look stunning—even more stunning, I mean—and I did tell her so. At least I think I told her so, but the music was loud at that point and she and Tom had a first dance, and a third dance, and a ninth dance to be getting on with, which wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to interrupt.